Heart of Darkness

Oh I am not ready! I am not ready to do this journal entry tonight, I’m not ready for ANYTHING! This was just one of the top three hardest days of racing I have done in my whole entire life!

We struggled all day to control the race. There were attacks forever and then finally an 18-man break got up the road. That’s a big break and there were a lot of good riders in it so we had to work all day long to keep the gaps down. It was just like all day riding hard and hurting and stressing…oh that was just HARD!

To give you an example of how bad it was, at one point I was in about 50th position and I’m knowing that I really need to be up front but I just can’t get there. And at this moment I start thinking it would be a good time to break my collarbone. A broken collarbone hurts really bad for like an hour, but then you are just relaxing to recover. But here in this Tour, the pain just continues.

Oh man I really walked through the belly of pain today. And in addition, it was an expensive day to keep the jersey.

Like I said yesterday, there was going to be a mad rush to get in good position at the bottom of the last climb with all of the overall contenders trying to get up front. And at the end of the day Alberto Contador took 10 seconds back on my teammate Andy. We still have the yellow jersey but Contador showed that he is not giving up.

We knew it was not going to be easy for Andy today. We just tried to get him in good position at the foot of the climb and then hope he could stay with Alberto. But we weren’t able to help him much on the climb because we had spent so much energy all day long on the stage.

I’ve got to hope and pray that tomorrow’s stage develops a little better than today’s, but I just don’t think so. The roads are similar. It is not as hard but just up and down all day long. I have to hope that sprinters will think that it could be a stage for them and help us control or that a break gets away, but I just don’t know what to think.

Today’s book was an easy choice. It was Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” That’s just the way I feel. I only feel darkness inside of me and I only see darkness ahead of me! I’m just F***ED, F***ED, F***ED and even more F***ED! And I just don’t know how I’m going to get out of this huge hole that I’ve dug for myself!

But today other guys on the team were good. Stuey O’Grady was just super. And so maybe in a couple of days, he won’t be so good and I’ll be good and I can make it up to him. Honestly I think that is what makes this team so good. We are just always willing to walk an extra mile for each other.

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